


Like Juno's Swans

by mayhap



Category: As You Like It - Shakespeare
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, F/F, Writing on the Body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 21:34:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayhap/pseuds/mayhap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Lying prone, as if in supplication before the great god Hypnos whose worship no man can abjure long, Rosalind displayed the fine white planes of her shoulders and back to great advantage, which put Celia in mind of a fine jest.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Juno's Swans

The bed which Ganymede shared rustically with his sister Aliena in their rude rented cottage was not so grand as that the cousins Rosalind and Celia had occupied in their proper persons at court. Rosalind measured its length when she extended her body fully, as she did now, her toes venturing somewhat past its frontier, unsupported; and as for its width, its deficiency counted for nothing, as they kept coupled so closely that even a bed still narrower should have accommodated them both.

Though Rosalind slept still, Celia had waked with the dawn as any shepherdess might do. Having, however, no country chores to fill her pleasant country hours, she kept to her bed and occupied herself with the contemplation of her cousin. Rosalind slept unclothed, as the man Ganymede might do, but not even the dullest country lass gazing upon her body now would be like to mistake her sex, however long and lean-limbed her form marked itself in contrast to the more common measure of woman. Lying prone, as if in supplication before the great god Hypnos whose worship no man can abjure long, Rosalind displayed the fine white planes of her shoulders and back to great advantage, which put Celia in mind of a fine jest. Without quitting the bed, she plunged into the depths of her baggage, diving deep and deeper until she produced her little pot of ink, finely wrought and firmly sealed, and one of the good white swan’s quills that Touchstone had made for her with a little knife that he carried, discoursing all the time on the cuts he had taken and given. Dipping the quill well in her ink, she began to scribe some words in the expanse of full supple and untanned parchment before her.

As she had hoped, the scrapes of Celia’s quill began to rouse her sleeping cousin. Rosalind stirred but little at first, uttering some words of protest directly into her pillow.

“I wake, I wake! Mercy, coz, and leave off thy tickling,” Rosalind begged, when she had extracted her face and found the full use of her sleep-clotted tongue.

“Still thyself, sweet my Rose, or I’ll foul my copy again,” Celia scolded, pressing Rosalind’s shoulder firmly back onto the bed as she rescribed the final word of her second line, which had slid into the vulnerable point beneath the arm. Rosalind brought her head round as far as it would go, but could yet see little of her cousin and nothing of her writing.

“Where cam’st thou by that tormenting feather? I would swear this mattress took its stuffing from a sheep and not a fowl.”

“Why, ’tis a most noble pinion, which thou hast many times seen at my writing desk, carried with me into these woods with mine other necessities.”

“And to what ignoble purpose?”

“The noblest purpose a lover can have, which is to compose some verses on her beloved.”

“O!” Rosalind started, as though the gentle scritch of the scribbling quill had been the sting of some fierce insect. “First in Arden Forest and now in mine own bed! Shall I be plagued with verses wheresoe’er I go?”

“To be sure, Orlando’s verse staggered about the forest like a man plagued,” Celia agreed, archly.

“Thou art unkind, coz, to make such sport out of that youth’s lame verse,” Rosalind protested, though Celia noted with satisfaction that some of the heat had gone from her defenses of this Orlando which had been so fiery only the day before.

“Yet thou wert full merry thyself, coz, and with no very tender regard for his infirmity, for all thy protested affections,” she said. “Why else should I choose to scribe my own verses in that very place where thou alone canst never spy them? For I’ll not have thee so merry at mine own expense.”

“Pray, read your verses to me, and I swear by the love I bear thee I’ll say nothing that is not as sweet as thine own sweet self,” Rosalind pleaded. “I swear it!”

“But nay, coz, thou shalt know nothing of this poem, for each line I add to its length brings it closer to privy matters, and maiden that thou art, thou shouldst blush to read it.”

“Maiden that thou art, thou shouldst blush to write it! For thou art no more maid than I,” cried Rosalind hotly.

“And thou as much maid as I,” Celia retorted.

“The color in thy cheek yesternight was no maiden’s blush,” said Rosalind. “Who taught thy hands to wander so, and such places find?”

“Why, coz, ’twas a lesson written in thy own sweet flesh, though in an occult tongue, which thy yelps and sighs of pleasure did swiftly teach me to speak. And with no man to mar us, are we not maidens still?”

“So thou wilt have it, yet I awake to find myself besmirched by a roving pen.”

“Besmirched! By my verses which thou art vowed to praise! Thy sworn sweetness is as full of pricks as thy name,” Celia scolded.

“Smirched and slandered both, i’ faith! For thou knowst better than any other that pricks have nothing to do with this Rose.”

“Whereas I have much to do with nothing,” Celia purred, and with the still-feathered tip of her quill began to torment her cousin ticklishly in that very present absence betwixt her thighs.

“O!” Rosalind cried, and struggled to free herself, but Celia, seated straddling her cousin, held her in place handily with her weight and found her efforts at escape rousing in their friction. “Thy words are all nothing, if thy deeds befit them not. Canst thou, with all thy learnings in the flesh, find no fitter labour to fill thy morn than this versification?” Rosalind pleaded, helpless, still squirming with unfulfilled desire.

“Be thou still, or how can I put a fit couplet to the finial of my sonnet?”

“What care I for thy sonnet, which I may not even read, lest it corrupt my purity? Thy teasing is above what my flesh can bear.”

Celia herself could bear to tease her only thus far, and knew that she would soon relent, though her teasing cousin fully deserved to be teased in her turn and know the torments that she unthinking dealt to her many lovers. “If thou willst but let me conclude this line, coz, I’ll blot any ink yet unfix’d with mine own flesh.”

“O, do,” urged Rosalind, “and quick, lest all this wetness should be lost to thee.”

Celia traced an elaborate final flourish at the very base of Rosalind’s spine, which again brought her quill to meet a most ticklish place, but this time she put it aside along with her ink pot and focused all her attentions on her cousin instead. “There,” she spake low into Rosalind’s ear, having spread herself quite prone across the parchment of Rosalind’s back, “if thou wouldst read what I have writ on thee, ’tis marked in reverse on mine own flesh, which is thine to read as thou wilt.”

“Touch me again there,” Rosalind enjoined, “And again, and again, and sayst what thou wilt, only touch me again, coz, I pray thee.”

“Always,” said Celia, and rendered Rosalind quite helpless with her fingers and how she thrust them, still quite coupled and inseparable, like Juno’s swans.


End file.
